Scientific Study of Media Effects Continued from April 10 2014 April 17 2014 o Inhibitory and disinhibitory effects of media Media content can either support reinforce those social sanctions or violate those social sanctions In regards to violence shows like CSI Criminal Minds Cops support those social sanctions and reinforce the idea that crime doesn t pay that criminals are punished that you should not act aggressively because you will put yourself and others in harm s way These are inhibitory effects people who watch them are further inhibited from studying violence All of this should lead to a decrease in violent actions further inhibiting desires to be aggressive But in adult shows sometimes the most attractive characters are the ones who are acting violently these are often called antihero narratives For example Dexter Game of Thrones Mad Men Bonnie and Clyde These characters are the good people the ones the audience is supposed to like Violence is shown to sometimes be all right to pay sometimes to be beautiful or amusing or useful These portrayals which depict social sanctions as being impotent wrong and useless might increase the likelihood that people will act violently in reality These are disinhibitory effects people who watch these shows are disinhibited from following social sanctions about violence The problem with media violence is not the presence of violence in general but the context in which it is found are the portrayals supporting or undercutting the social sanctions o This is especially applicable to children when they consume media that undercut the social sanctions they may become confused and think that violence is okay because some media are showing them that it is Mixed messages about violence in media are what can have negative effects especially in regards to children o Children usually cannot differentiate the idea of fantasy from reality before about the age of eight This increases the potential for violent portrayals to have an impact on children even if they are depicted in an especially fictitious manner like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fighting someone else for good A third theory is called cultivation o Stories are important in all culture why Narratives are the way that we see the world our lives have a beginning middle and end Stories teach morals and values Important things are filled with stories religious texts are filled with stories history is all one big story Grandparents friends tell stories all the time Stories are how we gain our understanding of the world We learn so many social sanctions thoughts about what we should do with our lives through stories Because of all these factors people who control stories control everything else in the world o What are some of the stories in our culture Most stories have a basic set up of good versus evil Biblical stories Adam and Eve Cain and Abel all teach moral lessons Rags to riches stories especially the American dream How America was founded the idea of manifest destiny and individual freedoms Anyone can be successful America is the land of opportunity Tales about the expectations for the way lives are supposed to play out graduate from high school go to college get a job and get married have children retire no deviation from social norms o How do these stories get passed on Family and friends stories read to us from books that convey to us a sense of how the world works stories that are told orally at parties and gathering Formal education Religion religious institutions MEDIA especially over the past fifty years media has become an increasingly dominant way of passing on stories in society In the 1960s television started to be examined as another socializing factor in society since by then there were people who had grown up with it A researcher named George Gerbner and his students argued that TV was the chief storyteller in our society They said that because of the ubiquity of television everyone was watching the same thing back then since there were only three channels and because people watched more television than they spent time learning about society at school in religious institutions and from their families and friends o So how similar are the images on television to those things that exist in the real world They quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn t that representative the real world doesn t look much like television for the most part For example shows like Friends Two Broke Girls people with those kinds of jobs would not be able to afford the places that they live in on the shows On crime drama shows more than 60 of all the crimes that are portrayed are murder in the real world less than 1 of all crimes that occur are murder On shows that portray the business world like Mad Men drinking two martinis at lunch supposedly can lead people to be the best and most energetic presenters in their company In real life this would probably just lead to people falling asleep or being off during their presentation o So the cultivation theory concludes that TV or media in general does not equal the real world o The cultivation hypothesis states that viewing the overall pattern of TV over time can lead otherwise diverse populations to hold similar views of reality o Cultivation also suggests that this is not a today versus tomorrow kind of things the people who watch the overall pattern of television over time begin to see the world in a similar way even though otherwise we would expect them to be very different because they are from different places different families different backgrounds We find that people don t have such a varied sense of the world because stories we learn on television and from media wash away some of the differences we have o What has been found There are differences between heavy and light viewers most of this research has been done on television hence the use of the word viewers The people who watch more TV and consume more media are more affected than those who watch consume less Mainstreaming effect Example gender role stereotypes like pink is for girls and blue is for boys women stay home and take care of kids while men work outside of the home women need to be rescued by men Over time television has reified these gender role stereotypes on TV and in media more men work outside the home and more women stay at home in general gender roles are enforced more often than not Therefore we find that the more people watch TV that depicts these traditional gender
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